our choice for engaging

This is a quick posting as I must still pack my suitcase and finish tidying the kitchen before I head back up the mountain but I wanted to share an awareness I had while on my patio this morning: I am able to learn patience toward living because I experience the unfailing patience of God with me!

Thirty some years ago when I first began living a program of recovery I was told a story about how to cope with confusion and chaos. One day a traveler came upon an ancient Bedouin living in the desert. The desert was large and as is the nature of deserts, dry and dusty and therefore around where the traveler and Bedouin sat, swirling 'devils' of dust rose from the floor of the desert scattering their energy and dust. As the traveler shielded his face from the blowing dust he asked the Bedouin, 'how do you live with these swirling dust devils?' The Bedouin peered into the distance as though seeing the swirling dust for the first time, shrugged and said, 'well, I just let them whirl.'

Oh, I thought hearing the story thirty some years ago, I suppose that makes sense; just let the dust whirl. In a lot of ways, I immediately intuited the point of the fable: dust tends to swirl so let it do what it does. I was however missing a rather vital piece needed in order to live as the old Bedouin did in the midst of whirling dust, and so although my intuiting was correct, my knowing: that is,understanding having seeped through my Being, so I could live from my intuiting, had yet to be acquired. The piece that needed to be acquired was the understanding that allowing dust devils to swirl as is their nature and yet not be exhausted by their swirling required that I choose to not engage their swirling - their whirling - their chaos and their confusion.

Not choosing to engage chaos and confusion has taken/is taking/does take learning how to be awake and aware of what is happening in the moment: a deliberate commitment to mindfulness. Acquisition of mindfulness is essential to allowing dust devils to be over there rather than jumping into their whirl because it is only by being mindful of the moment that I am able to be deliberate in the choosing of my thinking attached to the moment. Without knowing what my thoughts actually are attached to in the moment, my human tendency is rather to become fascinated by any kind of energetic activity and if we are not deliberate in creating our own energy our tendency is to jump into or onto the energy created by a separate situation. Often when we do this we engage turmoil.

Turmoil is simply confusion and agitation. The picture at the top of this posting is called turbulent waters and wonderfully illustrates the power of roiling energy continually thrust into a mass of boiling energy. When we engage turmoil we also then boil with the energies of confusion, agitation, anxiety, hostility, fear, nastiness, self righteousness and resentment. Whenever I am experiencing any of those feelings what I know is that I have somehow jumped into the dust devil and am whirling with it's energy. I have chosen - for whatever reason - to engage turmoil.

The reason I said at the beginning of this posting that I am learning patience as I become aware of God's infinitely kind patience with me is that although I had been given the story of dust devils thirty plus years ago and I have been trying to learn how to live it's meaning, it was only a couple weeks ago that the 'ah-ha' light bulb gleamed with understanding.

The light bulb lit up when I read a morning meditation with the rather simple {not to mention obvious} injunction do not choose to engage turmoil. I responded to those words with 'you mean experiencing turmoil is a choice I make?' Fortunately the meditations are good ones and it went on to answer my question by explaining that emotional turmoil always involves people and I always have the choice both in how I choose to see people as well as my choice of how {i.e., the manner in which} I involve myself with people. Duh!!! that is kind of obvious!!! Except .....

You see I was one of those annoying kids in class who heard something the teacher said and then raised my hand with a 'yeah, but, in this situation ....' That part of my self has mellowed a bit but my mind still tends to go 'well, that may be true a lot of the time but what about .....' I mean if you are river rafting through the rapids and the water is boiling all around you in turmoil it would be foolish to say 'oh whatever' and ignore the rather obvious fact that turmoil is occurring!

What about that situation?!?

I told you I have learned a bit of patience by experiencing God's patience and I swear to you as I 'thought' that scenario into consciousness I could hear/feel God's Spirit sigh and then patiently answer with: 'first of all, 'whatever' as a response to anything is not acceptance, it is the cop out of refusing to care about the well being of other people. Secondly if you are running the rapids in a river then most likely you made a choice to engage the sport of river rafting. Thirdly, you are not in a river running the rapids as a naked body bobbing about in the boiling water. That would be a truly dumb choice. If you have chosen to enjoy white water rafting as a sport then you are equipped with knowledge of how to engage the sport and you are in a 'boat' of some sort: control the boat and don't dip your oars into turbulent water!

Control the boat and don't dip my oars into turbulent water. When I 'heard' that phrase as I was picturing my dramatic scene in the white water rapids, I felt the light bulb shine, for in that moment I realized that choosing to engage turmoil was as foolish as thinking that one could control the direction of a boat running the rapids of a river, by digging into the water with their oar: a sure and proven way to become capsized as the boiling energy of the water will always be stronger than an oar. The only use for oars in that situation is to lay across the water and thus become a boundary for the water to push against thus allowing a bit of direction in the chaos.

As I 'watched' this picture in my mind, I began to understand that my 'boat' was NOT my 'self' - hello Mary! the self is in the boat! So what is the boat? What are the oars? The boat is created from my beliefs: the truths that are the foundation of how I choose to live. This being true, I can only control my boat if I have clarity about what I believe, what truth is contained in those beliefs and how I go about engaging those truths. My oars are the activity; the energy of engaging life with my choices: my perceptions, the thoughts arising from how I perceive and then the how of using my perceptions and thoughts as behaviors.

So, what I finally realized thirty years after hearing the story of the traveler, the Bedouin and the dust devils is that how and what I experience as I go about living depends completely on my choice of engagement. What I engage i.e., involve myself in, within any situation is what I will experience: engage love; experience love: engage delight; experience delight: engage learning; experience growth: engage the unknown with curiosity; experience adventure: engage adventure; experience creativity .... and on and on and on. Actually, what I am now learning is that the longer my personal list of engage - therefore becomes, the more options I have when I see the whirling dust of turbulence on the horizon.

So, here's the upshot of the whole thing: never give up on learning because the Source of all Knowledge never ever gives up on us - all we are asked to do is to remain an open and willing student. {I know, I'm tiresome on this, however, the best way to be an open and willing student is to set aside time each morning to actively engage the energy you want to be part of. Your discipline of practice is what creates your ability to learn and grow} If willingness is indeed evoked, I can guarantee that understanding does in fact arrive .... which actually is kind of fun as I learn that in fact an old dog CAN indeed learn new tricks!

Note: I am now off to pack my suitcase and head up the mountain to be a teacher and storyteller at church camp where I have no personal access to the internet and thus, no ability to post. Blessings to each of you and I will visit again when I return in a week.